Interview by Matias Aguayo
Photography by Marcelo Gomes

While Matias Aguayo has a relatively slim solo discography (he’s put out two albums and a handful of 12-inches over the past five years), you’ll find that within mere minutes of meeting the man or just listening to any of his output, every ounce of essence is music. He walks with a nonchalant rhythm you can almost hear: he gesticulates with the experienced energy of a conductor; he strings words and sentences together with the improvisational fluidity of a weathered jazz musician and he dynamically converses with an enchanting bounce as though he’s playing a game of verbal volleyball. It’s not surprising then, to learn that the Chilean-born artist grew up living and breathing music as though it were his bread and butter, food and shelter.

Aguayo originally rose to fame when he moved, aged 19 in the ’90s, to Cologne, where he quickly became immersed within the nascent Kompakt Records scene, teaming up with producers like Dirk Leyers (Closer Musik) and label co-founder Michael Mayer. But his unique sensibilities, skills and approaches to creating music became substantially more pronounced when he freed himself from the burden of German efficiency and returned to his home continent where he embarked on several solo endeavors, from LPs to popular street parties. Ay Ay Ay (Kompakt, 2009), Aguayo’s sophomore swing at the full-length format, is certainly his most pure (about 90 percent of its songs are constructed by his voice alone), ear-assaulting and genre-defying release to date. This is a man who uniquely merges the sentiments of populism with the rigidity of uninhibited creative freedom.

What was it like to tour in the U.S.?
For me, it was very exciting in that everything was new. At all the gigs I played I got the impression that there was some link between me and the audience, so it was always very beautiful. I was also very happy to have been invited to [participate] in so many different contexts. Like, the New York party was very house-y and the San Francisco thing was more of a cumbia event. I don’t like to stay in one genre all the time, and while I always play what I want to, it was nice to have the audiences come from all these different backgrounds. Also, the music of the United States has influenced that of so many other places and people, so it’s nice to travel to the origin of all that.

It was cool to see you at Mister Saturday Night in New York. Definitely an interesting scenario to see you in. I like how you ended your set with “Rollerskate” and went into the crowd for it. Do you always do that?
No. I quite improvise.

You’re going to Mexico next?
Yes, I’m doing my annual tour there. I go every year for three weeks or one month. It will be much less busy than the US tour, though. I’ll play once or twice a week. Also, the situation in Mexico is really bad at the moment. So many places where you could go to play in the past have become a bit more risky, or the police have become a lot stricter. It looks like I might only have four gigs – maybe a little bit more.

And then you’re back to Chile?
After Mexico, yes, I’ll go back to Chile, but not for long. I’m taking a longer stay in Europe again. I’m having many of my friends in South America come to Europe [because] we’re about to start a sort of band outfit. My activities from now on will be mainly in Europe.

I read a little about the band thing. What was the inspiration to form a band?
I don’t know. Everything I do is somehow a reaction to necessities. I always try to follow a flow of something. For this band thing, it’s like, ‘Okay, I’m playing as a DJ and my DJ set is becoming more and more a live set and I’m enjoying more and more playing stuff on top of the rhythms.’ So sometimes I don’t have enough arms or enough voices to do what I want, so the idea is to add more things to it, an extension of my DJ set. In some years, I’m sure it will turn to a full band, but nothing is planned like that. I want to add more people singing and more percussion and more keyboards and stuff. It’s just the next step, right? I’m already playing on top of all these [DJ set] rhythms, and I feel as though something more can grow from it all. Maybe an electronic percussion group with a lot of vocals.

It sounds really cool! And it’s interesting in that Ay Ay Ay is an album that you did almost entirely on your own. Or was it totally by yourself?
Yeah, it’s really almost only me. I’m very into the idea of opening myself to others and doing more collaborations, though. I mean, I started the albums years ago, so now it seems like the next step is to implement more musicians and to open towards the audience. My idea is to play for an audience who sings along or participates in music making somehow. The introspectiveness of electronic music and the auteur with his idea and his musical approach and his concept… (pauses) it’s something that doesn’t feel so 2010 to me. I think it’s time for some changes in how we produce. There are such great possibilities with recording music nowadays. Without needing much money, you can build up a [formidable setup], so we should concentrate more on the music making rather than this idea of production, which, in my opinion, comes much too early in the creative process. We need to think less about production and more about music making and the main ideas. That should be more important than, say, the sound of the kick drum or the hi-hat.

It’s very easy to get consumed by those more mundane ideas.
Yeah, I don’t think the pure joy of making music will be replaced by anything. It’s possible that vinyl will be replaced by digital, but I think a live performance will never be replaced by anything else.

You keep talking about how you like to interact with the audience, but what do you mean by this? How do you engage the audience yourself?
I don’t know. It’s a bit desperate. It’s a seduction process, but in an opposite sort of way in that people aren’t accepting anything from you. Some crowds give a lot and other crowds, you have to get them somehow. This is a challenge, but it’s a lot of fun. It seems difficult, but I enjoy it very much. When I enjoy playing, that’s when people can open up to things they maybe haven’t heard before or didn’t think they liked. The microphone and playing stuff [over music] is very important because people say, ‘Okay, so there’s a guy who sort of knows what he’s doing and he enjoys it.’ That is somehow contagious. Giving energy and taking it back. It’s like surfing on a wave. It’s not only you working; the people are supporting you, helping out. So I show no shame.

Out of curiosity, do you find that Americans and Europeans are a little more inhibited than South Americans
It’s always difficult to generalize, but what I will say is that broadly, I think there’s the sense in South America that you, as the audience, are partially responsible for how the party is going to be. It’s not only whether or not the DJ is good, but whether or not you’re a good audience. In Europe and North America, [parties] maybe are more about consuming in the sense that you’ve paid for something and now you need to be shown something. But I wouldn’t generalize too much. It’s very different from town to town, venue to venue. The U.S. is such a big mixture of immigrations and [demographics]. Also, parties [in some parts of the States] end at 2 a.m., but in Buenos Aires, you don’t go to the venue until then. This is good in the end for me because I don’t feel so tired after playing.

Okay, so you do the street parties in South America, and I sort of wonder why you even bother playing clubs when you’re so engaged in creating those experiences.
Well, first of all, I get paid (laughs). No, I never said that the street party replaces the club. In many cases, it’s more challenging and I like it more, but I still do like the club. What I don’t like so much is this idea of performance. Like, if you talk about dance music, you talk about the club; if you talk about ambient music, maybe you talk about tripping out in your living room, bouncing on the sofa. I don’t like at all the idea of music being constricted to these controlled spaces. If you want to see a movie, you go the theater; if you want to dance, you go to the club; and so on. Dancing, for me, is something that should be a part of everyday life and can happen in a living room or on a street or in a club. I don’t think music has to work specifically in a club. I find this very limiting. This limitation is something I don’t like and find uninspiring.

That reminds me. The last time we spoke, you were explaining how you made Ay Ay Ay, and you said something about how you never stand still when you’re making music.
I really believe that you can’t pretend with music. I think music is such a clear and open language, and so if it’s made pretentiously or conceptually, you’ll hear it in the end result. I’m very interested in the deep, soulful and joyous processes of music-making.

Too many producers think of their jobs as, like, desk jobs. They sit in their studio, day in and out, and –
Yeah, I think it can be very similar to office work. You have the laptop, deadlines and so on. There’s the danger of having this reflected in music. This efficiency principle brings with it a lot of artists who don’t really have such great imaginations or fantasies or visions, but can work [quickly and concisely]. Good musicians are often lazier and not so well organized, but these efficient ‘office worker’ musicians deliver music every week and with it comes a lack of intensity. My label, Cómeme, is supposed to be for those people who are considered lazier or more disorganized. One of the ideas of the label is for it to be a place for people like that to collaborate and not just promote themselves like crazy and sell their stuff and do this thing that I like to call ‘professional techno’. The album before Ay Ay Ay, Are You Really Lost (Kompakt, 2005), was sort of dedicated to those people – the people who didn’t make it. The next step for me, then, is to foster this infrastructure where I can just keep creating stuff with friends. This is back to what I said earlier about changing the music making process into something that’s more shared, more [collaborative]. Making it less about the auteur in front of a screen.

I have too many friends who make music and DJ and they’re always under these constant pressures from external forces. Like time-length constraints for remixes or track suggestions for parties. It seems like there’s a certain lack of respect for the individual artist.
I don’t find myself in this position, really. I think people are more open than they used to be because they don’t really know what they want to hear. I think the restrictions that you’re talking about fall more on the shoulders of the artists. Like, with techno, there are self-imposed restrictions. The artist lays the rules. And I think people sometimes underestimate audiences. For example, if someone likes shit music, that doesn’t necessitate that they don’t also like some good music.

Can you tell me again about how you made Ay Ay Ay?
Well, there came a point when I decided I definitely wanted to do another album, but I wanted to make sure the process was very easy and joyful.

It’s easier to get your raw, creative ideas across when you don’t have to use a keyboard or a synthesizer or effects pads –
Oh, yeah! Recording with a microphone. It’s a very simple process and I would definitely consider my voice to be my main instrument. The instrument I play best. Also, it’s the quickest and most directly representative of what’s in my head and my imagination. It’s spontaneous. My idea in the beginning was to record ideas, like sketches, with my voice. If I had an idea for a bass line, I would sing it; if I had an idea for a rhythm, I would also make it with my mouth. So I thought I’d do arrangements like that and then translate it all into electronic music. I thought I’d replace the [vocal] bass lines with real sounds and spontaneous noises with lyrics and so on. But, over time, I started liking more and more how the vocals sounded [alone]. I liked the emphasis on improvisation. I wanted to concentrate on live music making and not get [overly consumed] with the notion of perfect takes and post-production editing. 20 years ago, it would’ve been impossible to do something like this, but nowadays, you can with a regular computer and a good sound card and a microphone.

The whole album is your voice, right?
Mmm, there’s some accordion on one track and some percussion here and there, and a marimba line, but I would say it’s 90 percent my voice.

That’s insane. I can’t imagine how many tracks you had to layer up.
Ah, yeah, that was a lot. Like, 50 layers of voices. Also, it was very interesting to get an idea of how one works with such material. Like, if you work with drums, bass and guitar, you sort of have a blueprint for how to work with it all. But how do you work with 50 voices? Also, voice – my voice, anyway – can be compromising. I don’t have the treble of some electronic sound nor the deep bass of… (pauses) whatever. I’m stuck to a certain range.

Okay, let’s go back in time a little. You moved from Cologne back to Chile, like, seven years ago?
No, it was from Cologne to Buenos Aires. Now I’ve been back in Chile for three months, but for the seven years before that, I was always going back and forth between Paris and Buenos Aires. Now things are changing a little bit. I might be going to Chile more often. I also am considering returning to Cologne.

What compels you to jump around so much?
On the one hand, it’s something I like. If you grow up as an immigrant’s child in Germany, you never really identify with that place, so you have a special experience there. On the other hand, when you go back to the country you’re from, the feeling is strange as well. It’s a weird space to occupy. Music making gives me the possibility to combine those cultures that live inside me. Sometimes one struggles with the other, but more often than not, it’s about taking the good vibes and inspirations of South America and combining them with what I learned in Cologne or France. Taking Latin inspiration and joyfulness and merging it with the idea of German efficiency – in the end, it’s like a way of finding peace within myself (laughs). The best I can do is to build a bridge between the different places I’m from or the place that somehow feels like home. Sometimes it can be tiring. The worlds are so different. Also, when I’m in one place, I miss my friends [elsewhere].

You moved to Cologne when you were 19 years old, right?
Yeah.

That’s an integral time in your life. A lot is changing at that age. Did you feel like you were shedding a weight when you came back to South America?
It felt a little like a burden, so when I left, I felt freer, like I could be the person I am. There are many sides to me, and many of them don’t work so well in Germany. Reconnecting with South America, with my roots, that was really important. It filled a gap.

With the Kompakt scene and the Cologne scene, I can imagine that, after years and years of being so immersed in them, they can become all consuming.
Yeah, I mean, I think by changing locations I found something new in me and found new inspirations. I really like the idea of living for music as opposed to the other way around. That is, I want to always create new situations that lead to new results. Musically, I’m not somebody who believes in searching for solutions, but rather somebody who creates situations within which to find something new. In this respect, leaving Cologne was very good. It’s not a very big city, and after 10 years of living there, I really knew every corner of the place. It’s been such a long time, though, that it’s always very nice to return. It has a neighborhood spirit, so when I come back to where I lived, people recognize me and that’s really cool.

It sounds like you’re bringing something fresh to the table every time you return.
Yeah. I can always bring something back with me. I go back to Cologne and I’ve had all these experiences, and I can share them with the people who are there, the friends that I miss. The city is a great place for music, too. It doesn’t have the variety of, say, London, but it’s very concentrated and it’s not unusual that so many people are into making music. There’s a great understanding of music there.

I love how you have this very clear-minded acknowledgment of how music, for you, is an ever-evolving entity. It keeps growing and developing and progressing. You’re very inspiring.
Well, great! Thank you.